


The Function

by deeblink



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 09:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deeblink/pseuds/deeblink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gil has to attend a civic function and gets bored and irritated...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Function

The Function

They had to attend this function once a year. LVPD personnel, including lab staff, had to show their faces at a civic event to acknowledge that they were, indeed, very grateful to their benefactors for giving them the financial backing to continue their invaluable work. 

It didn’t go unnoticed that there were a fair number of attendees who ‘sailed close to the wind’, and thought that their monies ‘helped’ them to keep afloat. The politicians among them understood that was the game they played and played along. This was Vegas after all, and they all played some game to a certain extent.

Not quite all; there were a small number who took pride in their own integrity and hoped that their small contribution could be truly considered to be honest and done without compromise.

Among this small band was Gil Grissom. He was forced to attend to put himself on show for the commercial world to see that they did indeed, contribute to the greater good. Dr Grissom was employed as a Forensic Scientist; it was his integrity and his dream of creating a Criminalistic laboratory that was second to none, that had managed to pull the lab into the twenty first century and although it was second to the FBI lab, the Government funded FBI Lab in Quantico, in real terms in competition with all other PD labs it was first.

Even he had to acknowledge that the very paymasters that he considered compromised provided the money for his venture. Nevada was funded by the casinos; the taxes and the profits that they generated paid the bills, all of them.

So he was here, dressed up and on show. He’d just been the central witness in a murder trial, and his entomological expertise had ensured that a particularly vicious man had been sent to death row. He would never consider that a success; a man’s life for even the three he’d taken was not a victory to be celebrated but a mourning for all the victims. Gil would always consider that perpetrators themselves, for whatever reason, were also victims. 

So he was mingling. Not actually the mingling most people would consider appropriate for such an event. The networking aspect was completely lost on Gil and he would have a drink in his hand, stay nearby people he knew and at all costs avoid eye contact with those he would rather not have eye contact with. (This would actually be anyone other than the people he knew.)

He was often mistaken for shy and reserved; ‘socially inept’ was a phrase that the aspiring political animals within LVPD would label him with. In truth he was not shy or reserved. He was a bold and forthright man in his own world, and the world he chose was small and exclusive as befitted a private man. He had no need for the social niceties associated with the type of function he was attending. He could do ‘social’ and he could do ‘nice’ but found no need to do either with these people. 

Another anomaly with Gil was that many people, not privy to his circle of friends, thought he was a lonely man. Alone. Unloved and unloving – emotionally incapable, even. All these descriptions were woefully inaccurate. 

He had a partner with whom he had lived for several years. He loved and was loved in return. He was very capable of a great many things, including emotions. He had an inscrutable expression that masked his true identity, and he would assume this work identity for the purposes of…work.

He had developed this expression to hide his emotions, reasoning that a more detached mode was more in keeping with his role and more sensible given his position. It would not betray his innermost thoughts and feelings about his work or about his life…about him. When he first began his professional life this had been an imperative for him. Or more accurately, for all men like him.

For Gil Grissom was gay. 

He had dated women and certainly enjoyed their company, but when it came to a physical attraction it was men and always had been. He had been extraordinarily lucky in his twenties. He was serious minded and loved his work but privately he’d been involved in a very active gay scene. He had many short term relationships - one night stands - it was the accepted gay scene at that time. But then AIDS and HIV had exploded on the scene and he’d taken an immediate step back. 

He’d had himself checked out and assumed a period of abstinence. Such was the virulence of the virus that it shook his (the) world. Although clean, when the likelihood of a virus that could remain undetected was disclosed, he remained abstinent and was tested regularly for years. As were a lot of men in his position. It had come as a severe shock and he threw himself into his work. He studied and attained his PhD. He improved his knowledge. He built up his reputation and was asked to move to Las Vegas, to help establish a lab worthy of note.

That’s what he did. 

But along the way he was somewhat sidetracked. 

He was sipping on a soda in the large room. It was air conditioned, of course, so it wasn’t uncomfortable, but he was uncomfortable. Not just because he had to wear his best suit and a shirt and tie. Not even because he was in a room full (mostly) of sycophants. 

No, his major discomfort lay in the fact that the sidetrack was in the room with him, but not actually with him. 

The reputation of the lab had started to attract a series of out of state applicants for the few coveted jobs on offer. One such applicant was a Texan; a young man with some experience and obvious potential. He’d had a varied background but wanted to be an investigator. While Gil had been involved in some of the interviewing and did have a fair amount of input into who was actually hired, if it had been left to him he would have employed the young man the moment he saw him, regardless of whether he could actually read or write.

Nicholas Stokes was the first man that Gil Grissom had instantly lusted over for the first time in, maybe, fifteen years. He was smitten. Completely and utterly. There would be times over the ensuing five years when he bitterly regretted his endorsement to hire the man. 

He went from lust, to more lust, to getting it under control, to losing that control and starting from scratch again. Never once did it occur to him, the man who had easily picked up and fucked many men, that he should actually approach Nick and proposition him. His gaydar failed him completely because he was under the impression that Nick Stokes was as completely and utterly heterosexual…as Gil was not.

For five years.

For five years he lusted after Nick. Most of the time he kept himself under control and then sometimes – at a crime scene, in the lab, at a breakfast buffet, wherever, he’d just see Nick in a particular moment and he’d catch his breath. But gradually it became more, not just a fantasy Gil could masturbate to, but he’d imagine them sleeping together after the fantasy fuck. They’d live together, do things together. They’d love.

Gil fell in love with Nick. 

It had taken all that time but the looks of Nick were superseded by the character of Nick, the intelligence, the humour, the kindness, the whole package. It was becoming unbearable and for the first time in his working life, Gil was finding it difficult to function, to separate work from Nick. 

Especially when Nick was there, at work. All the time. It seemed to Gil, he’d turn a corner and nearly bump into Nick. He’d look up from his desk and Nick would be walking past his office. He’d enter the locker room and Nick would be at his locker. The briefing room, the break room, the bathroom… And, that was the very nearly the last straw. How on earth could Gil stand next to a pissing Nick and not even catch a glimpse at the goods. He tried his hardest, he really did. After the third time of finding Nick already standing in front of a urinal, he left the bathroom. Odd behaviour or not, he just couldn’t do it.

Crime scenes alone with Nick became a thing of the past and that was ultimately the thing that Nick called Gil on. One Thursday, one February, it was, after shift had ended, Nick walked into Gil’s office and, this was the big clue, closed the door behind him.

“Is it okay to have a few minutes with you, Gris?”

No, no, please, I can’t bear it. “Of course Nick, what is it?”

“Well, I know you’ve had some problems with me in the past, but I thought those days had gone. But, well, it’s like you don’t want anything to do with me any more. At first I thought you were just forgetful, going out with the others and not me. And then…well…it seems you’ve been avoiding me. Turning around in the corridor when you see me walking towards you. Coming into the break room and then turning and going straight out when there’s only me there and then you sort of freaked me out Gris because you wouldn’t come into the bathroom when I was there.

“If it had been one thing or a couple, then okay, but after a few I started to notice more and…have I done something to you…personally…because if it was work I thought you’d tell me. Have I offended you Gris? If I have I am really sorry, I never meant to.”

The long speech had Gil sitting back in his chair, going redder and redder by the syllable. He was certain he was sweating quite heavily; he could feel that uncomfortable creepy feeling on his scalp and the palms of his hands were very damp and burning hot, as if they were blushing too.

He had been caught, like a rat in a trap. He’d thought he’d been casual and had not attracted attention. Who was he kidding; he’d been leaving incriminating evidence all over the lab. He was that evidence - a walking disaster - and now he was well and truly caught and stuck, he had absolutely no idea what to say. No idea whatsoever, the man - who could be relied on for a quip at any inappropriate moment - was struck dumb. 

As the seconds passed he was aware that Nick was looking at him, at first hopefully, looking for resolution and then in a puzzled fashion, his forehead creasing into a frown. Gil opened his mouth and it was so dry, his lips stuck together and he licked his lips with an even drier tongue. He could feel the perspiration on his upper lip. He had to say something, but what?

“I…I…don’t…I don’t…know…what to say.”

(As Gil remembered that moment nearly six years later he felt that very same embarrassment…a little less acutely, of course.) 

Nick looked at Gil with astonishment and then with a flash of understanding that surpassed all other flashes of understanding, both before and since and evermore, Nick said…

“Gris…you’re…are you gay?”

Gil did not know whether to shake his head, nod his head, speak, close his eyes, breathe, he was completely senseless.

Nick continued. “Do you…like me?”

Gil’s mouth did drop open at this comment.

“’Cause I sure as hell like you!”

“Yyyou…you do?”

“I’ll be damned. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“You like me?”

“Like you? Man, I’m gay and, sweet lord, would you believe it, so are you! What kind of idiots are we?”

“Complete?” 

“That would about sum it up. I have never dared to hope, not once.”

“Nor me.” 

“So…?”

“Do you think we should do something?” At Nick’s raised eyebrows and grin, Gil added, “Breakfast, I mean, no, a drink, I need a drink.”

“Let’s do just that.”

That first drink led to breakfast, dinner, dating, sex, love, living together, outing, and just last year, the Civil Partnership ceremony up in Canada.

And now, this infernal function, thought Gil, as he watched his partner doing the social nicety bit around the room. He came from a family of politicians and one of his sisters was even a career diplomat. It was in his blood.

But it wasn’t that, he didn’t mind that. No, it was the women. Everywhere they went women’s eyes followed Nick around. He was handsome; Gil actually thought he was beautiful and of course he would attract attention. Even other men would look and if other gay men realised an affinity, then they would have a fight on their hands.

Gil wasn’t jealous, he really wasn’t: he was absolute in his trust of the man he loved. He was just irritated, that was the best word to describe the feeling. What thing was it that Nick had that had women (men) falling at his feet? Gil smirked as he answered his own question, it was obviously exactly the same thing that Gil felt and saw. That irresistibility that was somehow inherent in Nick as he stood, moved, talked, walked…lived and breathed. 

It was ‘it’.

But, as Gil was fairly miserable at being made to attend this function he’d decided to be irritated by the attention Nick was getting. He wasn’t normally this irritated. But he decided that he wanted to do something. He didn’t know what, just be mischievous perhaps. Something to relieve the tedium. 

He caught Nick’s eyes at just that moment and quickly discarding his glass he signed to Nick across the room. ‘Need speak now, balcony.’

Nick nodded his understanding and looked to a door to the balcony, Gil followed his eyes and he too, nodded in agreement. Both men then made their way to the balcony of the function room to meet. Several pairs of (women’s) eyes had seen this exchange and followed the men’s exit to the balcony.

They met up, Gil leaning his hands on the balcony and looking down onto the floor of the casino of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Nick leaned his ass against the balcony so that they were alongside one another and almost facing each other.

“I bet I know what’s wrong with you.”

“That’s too easy. You know I hate these functions.”

“I didn’t, why didn’t you tell me!” There was a heavy dose of sarcasm attached to this statement since Gil had been, almost continually, whining about this evening’s event for days.

“I thought I had mentioned it, maybe I was mistaken.”

“Yeah, maybe you did once or twice. What’s really wrong babe, tell me?”

“It’s the women Nick, they’re all over you and I’m not.” Gil whined, he didn’t often whine (he did, actually), but he thought the situation warranted it. 

“Gil, it’s nothing…you know that. Who do I belong to?”

“Me.”

“Exactly. And who do you belong to?”

“You.”

“You crack me up sometimes, babe. The forensic scientist, the world renowned bug man, and yet you let these silly women bug you….no offence to your bugs there, babe.”

“None taken…but be careful with that loose tongue of yours.”

“I’m always careful with my tongue, you know that.” Nick’s voice dropped an octave and almost purred out the words.

“Don’t. Not here, you tease, we’ve got at least another hour and a half.”

“More like two hours.” 

Gil groaned, “Then I think I need fortifying.”

Nick looked suspicious. “Fortifying….how exactly?” 

“Mmmmm, well we could just have a little, a tiny, just a smidgeon of a make out session before we have to re-enter the fray…what do you say?”

“God, no, absolutely not…where?” 

“Right here.”

“You’re kidding me now, in full view of the entire casino and the room behind us full of our paymasters, with whom we should be in bed…so to speak!”

“Don’t even say those words in idle reference to them, Nicky. Yeah here, no one will notice, they’re all too busy watching their own backs to worry about anyone else’s.”

“Follow me.” Nick’s instruction. Gil could always depend on Nick; he never could, or would, resist a challenge 

Nick walked along the balcony and round the side of the function room. Gil followed dutifully. The balcony continued all around the upper level and the function room they should have been in was now out of sight.

As he turned the corner, Nick spun around on his axis and gave the area a quick check, the coast was clear and almost in the same moment and movement he grabbed the lapels of Gil’s suit and pulled him to him, their lips meeting in an open mouthed kiss, engaging tongues almost immediately. Nick felt Gil’s grin beneath the kiss. 

“Gottcha!” Gil said against the lips and tongue, not an inconsiderable feat. But he slipped his hands beneath Nick’s open suit jacket and put them around the warm and muscled waist, pulling him closer to him. He even took the opportunity to buck his hips into Nick’s and purely by chance (not) felt a very interested penis rub against his own, in a similar state.

“No, you haven’t, babe. We cannot do this here.” Nick was being sensible now. 

“You issued the challenge knowing full well I cannot resist you…so…you win…but now I’m being responsible, unlike you. If people only knew that I’m the sensible, grounded one and YOU’RE the reckless irresponsible one and such a total fraud, you’d lose all your street cred!”

“No one would believe a word of it, you young whippersnapper; I’m old, my credibility is intact, thank you very much.” Gil laughed, and as a parting shot slid his hands onto his (second) favourite location on Nick’s body – his ass. He gave a good squeeze to each cheek (he was continually amazed that they had been made specifically with him in mind, they fit so well into each of his hands) and pulled them towards him, further inflaming their burgeoning erections.

Nick hugged Gil in response and whispered in his ear, “Later, I promise…and you know I keep my promises.”

“I do.”

They straightened their clothing and as nonchalantly as they’d walked out of the function they walked back in. The eyes of the women, who’d watched Nick leave, saw him return and several of the older women seriously fancied their chances. A couple of the younger ones caught the subtle body language of the returning men and wondered…

The following shift Gil had no sooner arrived at work than Ecklie was on him. Unusual. Ecklie worked days as the AD, and Gil, and Nick, were both graveyard men.

“What the fuck did you think you were playing at last night, Grissom?”

“I wasn’t aware I was playing anything but the game I had been instructed to, attend, and mingle for three hours and leave, without upsetting anyone. I hardly spoke to anyone to ups…” He was cut off by Ecklie.

“Now that is very true; you hardly opened your mouth except to let Stokes physically examine your tonsils from the inside. Are you aware, Dr Grissom, man of infinite knowledge and experience, that every casino in this town has a million cameras following everything everyone does, all day, every day? Did you know - had you forgotten?”

Gil was trying very hard not to laugh - his plan had worked extraordinarily well and incredibly fast, (true, Nick would probably try to kill him, but the make-up sex would be fabulous, providing Nick left his genitalia intact) he was biting his bottom lip and he was sure his eyes would betray him as the tears of merriment started to well.

“You think it’s goddamned funny?” Ecklie was shouting.

“Mmmmm!” Gil was trying to say ‘no’ but he couldn’t quite manage and his face was cracking.

“Jesus Gil, the tape, or CDs, or whatever, are being sold and distributed around the hotels’ security people and LVPD.” Ecklie was cooling down a bit. He had thought that Gil would be embarrassed and would squirm but plainly the man couldn’t give a toss.

“Don’t blame me if the sheriff has you in.” Ecklie turned and went to walk out of Gil’s office.

“Conrad?” Ecklie turned back to face Gil,

“I don’t suppose you could get me a copy…”

The End


End file.
